Hammer Horror and my darkest hour
Unfortunately, I didn’t get it playing football. I got it — cough — running for a tram.
Actually, it’s not entirely true to say that I never had a proper football injury before. Once, when turning out for the grand old club, HotPress Moenchengladbach 1891 — the legendary ‘Munchies’ — I did go over rather spectacularly on my ankle. Unfortunately, the ball was nowhere near me at the time, as was usually the case in my playing “career”, so it hardly qualified as “shipping a knock”.
Nevertheless, it is vital in these matters to employ the correct terminology. So, when anyone asked why I was on crutches, I never explained that it was the result of a sprain caused by simply turning awkwardly on a hard pitch. No, much more satisfyingly, I had “done me ligaments”.
Still, the old ankle swelled up impressively enough and the crutches were eliciting all the right sympathetic noises, until I made the mistake of limping theatrically into the office of The Sunday Press where, back in the mists, I used to sit at a desk beside my then colleague Liam Hayes. “What happened to you?” Liam asked. “Done me ligaments playing ball,” I answered in the vernacular, before lifting a trouser leg to proudly show off the dramatic discolouration which had by now been added to the bump.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Liam, a comment which pleased me no end, until it dawned on me that the reason he might never have seen anything like that is because, of course, Liam played Gaelic football for Meath, and to fellas like himself, Mick Lyons, Colm O’Rourke and the rest of that band of warrior brothers, a swollen ankle would have been no more worthy of comment or consideration than a shaving cut. Now, had I come in to work carrying the raw, bleeding stump of my severed leg under my arm, it might have different. In those circumstances, at the very least, the Meath man would surely have taken time out to offer some sage advice on the merits of “running it off”.
But back to my latest injury setback. It happened when a colleague and I were coming out of the France-Romania snoozefest in Zurich and saw our tram for the city centre pulling up at a stop a couple of hundred yards away. I didn’t have to think twice about what course of action to take. “Ah, we’ll get the next one,” I said, feeling the dead weight of the laptop bag on my shoulder and conscious too of my advancing years and a crippling addiction to cigarettes. In short, my sprinting days are long over. Unfortunately, my colleague, younger and nicotine-free, was already tearing off at full tilt, a sight which, against all my better instincts, encouraged me to follow suit.
And, to my astonishment, I found that I hadn’t lost that extra yard of pace after all. There I was, hair blowing in the wind, covering the ground in great majestic strides, closing rapidly on the tram and drawing, I’d like to think, gasps of admiration from passers-by when, suddenly — ping! — there was sharp pain in the back of my thigh and I was instantly reduced to hopping forward on one leg. In the immortal words of legendary Irish physio Mick Byrne, I had “tweaked the hammer”.
There are many honourable ways of doing your hamstring, but running for a tram in Zurich is not generally one of them. And that wasn’t the end of the embarrassment. A tram official, upon seeing my discomfort, stuck his foot in the door so it wouldn’t leave without me. Which was nice, except that all eyes on the packed vehicle were now turned towards me as I hobbled pathetically on board. There were mutterings in various languages which I took to mean, collectively, “Ah jeez, look at that poor bastard.” And then an old lady offered me her seat. But even that wasn’t the worst of it: the worst of it was that I took it.
If what can only be called my hammer horror was the low point of my Euro trip to date, the highlight was undoubtedly a visit to the Blindkuh restaurant in Zurich.
Although “highlight” is, quite literally, a most inappropriate word to describe the experience of eating a meal in total darkness.
The Blindkuh (or ‘Blind Cow’, named after a Swiss children’s game) was founded in 1999 by a blind pastor, the Rev Jorge Spielman, with the intention of giving employment to blind people and exposing sighted folk, however briefly, to a world without vision.
The restaurant is set in a lovely converted Methodist chapel in a leafy suburb of the city but, beyond the lighted lobby, I can tell you nothing whatsoever about the interior. Upon arrival, you divest yourself of lighters, mobile phones, watches and anything else which might cast even a glimmer of light. These are placed in a locker, along with any bags you might have, since these would constitute potentially dangerous obstacles if left on the ground inside the restaurant. Whilst still in the lobby, and as you are ordering from the set menu, it is explained to you that you will have a designated waitress whom you must call if, for any reason — such as going to the loo — you need to leave the eating area. Apparently, a few people have found the whole experience of partial sensory deprivation so unnervingly claustrophobic that they become unwell and have to bail out.
Our waitress, Cornelia, duly came out to greet us. Like most of the staff at the Blindkuh, she is totally blind but also totally at home in what for sighted guests is a radically alien environment. With Cornelia taking the lead, we were invited to place a hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us and, crocodile-file, proceed into the restaurant proper, first through a dimly lit ante-chamber — to allow our eyes to adjust — and then, through a second set of heavy black drapes, and into, well, complete and utter darkness. And I mean an impenetrable inky blackness of such totality that you could see absolutely nothing, not even your own hand when you brought it right up to your face.
INSTANTLY, sound became our principal link to the world. All around were the familiar noises of a busy restaurant — the clink of glasses, the scrape of cutlery, conversation, laughter — but we could see nothing or no-one as our waitress expertly guided our halting steps to a table and helped us locate our seats. Then the meal proceeded in a perfectly normal way, save for the fact that, to begin with, Cornelia had to place our cutlery in our hands and, thereafter, would announce her presence and position — “I am now at your right side” — each time she came to the table. Simple measures are used to reduce accidental spillage. For example, a bottle is always placed directly behind a glass, so that the one’s probing fingers first encounter the solid weight of the smaller, heavier object.
And it’s remarkable how quickly you adjust to it all even if, inevitably, the odd errant spud might roll onto your lap or your fork wouldn’t always have food on it by the time it reaches your mouth. And the food, let it be known, is excellent which, of course, it needed to be if the ‘Blindekuh’ was ever going to be anything more than a well-intentioned but short-lived novelty. In fact, eight years after its launch, it remains hugely popular and is often booked out weeks in advance. And another ‘Blind Cow’ has opened its doors in Basle.
Most importantly for sighted guests, the ambiance is entirely relaxed and good-humoured. Inevitably, the experience is initially so strange that there is a real temptation — which, frankly, one is not always able to resist — of succumbing to a fit of the giggles. But Cornelia was invariably the first to laugh at any minor bumps or scrapes and, before long, we shed any awkwardness or embarrassment and could concentrate on the good grub and the strangely heightened sensation of relying on four senses, instead of five.
If I have one complaint about the Blindekuh, it’s that, at least on this occasion, they didn’t have my favourite fish dish on the menu.
Because if they had, then I could truly say that I too have experienced the long, dark night of the sole.
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